16. Javanese regent with his chiefs

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16. Javanen. Regent met zijn Hoofden.

The Regent of Blitar in East Java posed for this unusual portrait flanked by chiefs from his own districts and elsewhere. Descended from a long line of rulers who frequently married into nobility outside the region, the nobles lived an existence that was totally alien to the common man. In this plate, each chief is depicted with a bearer holding a closed parasol. The width of the stripes, the colors and size of each parasol signify the rank of the noble. Gold and certain patterns were reserved exclusively for the monarch and his immediate blood relations. The cone-shaped hat, the embroidery on the costume, the manner in which the sarong is folded. even the shoes the ruler is wearing were indicative of his rank.

Antique school board of a Regent with his chiefs. Taken c.1895 and published between 1912 and 1914 in Holland.

The Regent of Blitar in East Java posed for this unusual portrait flanked by chiefs from his own districts and elsewhere. Descended from a long line of rulers who frequently married into nobility outside the region, the nobles lived an existence that was totally alien to the common man. In this plate, each chief is depicted with a bearer holding a closed parasol. The width of the stripes, the colors and size of each parasol signify the rank of the noble. Gold and certain patterns were reserved exclusively for the monarch and his immediate blood relations. The cone-shaped hat, the embroidery on the costume, the manner in which the sarong is folded. even the shoes the ruler is wearing were indicative of his rank.

This photograph depicting the Dutch East Indies was originally published as part of an information series for school children. It consisted of 170 educational prints and covered a diverse range of subjects, separated into two parts: numbers 1-150 depicted places and people in the Dutch East Indies and numbers 151-170 depicted places and people in the Dutch West Indies. The first 150 photographs of the collection are attributed to the photographer Jean Demmeni (1866-1939), whose pictures provided the Dutch public with some of the first photographic depictions of the colonies that they had read so much about. Demmeni was born in Padang Panjang in West Sumatra, the son of a native woman of the island of Madura and a Frenchman who had left his country to join the Dutch East Indies Army. Demmeni followed in his father Ļs footsteps and, after technical training in Holland, entered the Third Infantry Regiment in 1887. He was seconded to the topographic unit of the armed forces and in 1894 was assigned as the official photographer to an expedition to Borneo led by Dr. A.W. Nieuwenhuis. Demmeni was then employed by the Topographical Service at Batavia from 1911 until 1920, after which he worked as a photographer at the Central Office of Dactyloscopy. In the biography of Jean Demmeni Indonesia: Image s of the Past (Singapore: 1987), Leo Haks described him as Ļone of the first photographers Ļ to capture the islands of the Indonesian archipelago, and called his work a ‚Äėvital contribution to Indonesian history and the art of photography‚Äô which Ļprovides a comprehensive record of the Indonesian islands at the turn of the century, unmatched in its singular insights Ļ. This selection of photographs shows interesting details around the expansion of industries such as tobacco (a lucrative export) in the area, and the local processes of production. The group also records the religious influences in the region, showing Islamic and Christian presences in local communities. Islam had been established in Indonesia since the fourteenth century, and colonial European settlers had ushered in a new phase of Christian proselytising around the Pacific Ocean ‚Äď one which was frequently characterised by notorious insensitivity towards the indigenous population. However, these photographs demonstrate the more tolerant educational interest being taken at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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